Don Mills Collegiate Institute
__FORCETOC__ Overview Don Mills Collegiate Institute (15 The Donway East, 395-3190) features a growing communications facility equipped with an Internet link for both computer and multimedia courses. Through its partnerships with Rogers Cable Systems and the Ontario Science Centre, Don Mills places a number of its students into co - op jobs in the technology and science fields. Additional placements are also available as part of one of the family studies classes and through a career exploration course in Grade 12. Students needing remedial help will find tutors in a staffed learning centre. Extracurricular clubs and sports teams include water polo, field hockey, the black students organization and math clubs and competitions. Facilities: gym, track and field, pool, fitness centre, four science labs, photo lab, music studios with electronic keyboards and a computerized multimedia presentation centre. Admission: out - of - area students may be accepted. "The high school guide (First annual survey of secondary schools in Metro)", Toronto Life 28.13 (Sep 1994): G1-G30. History Land for a high school and junior high school to serve residents of Don Mills was acquired in 1957 by the North York Board of Education in a land swap with E. P. Taylor‘s Don Mills Development Company. The school board had owned a similarly-sized plot of land on Don Mills Road, which it exchanged for the property at Lawrence Avenue and The Donway East. Initially, the board planned to build two separate schools on the site with a shared heating plant, but in October 1957, trustee Dorothy Bishop prepared a report which raised the possibility of saving money by placing the two schools under one roof, as had previously been done in Vancouver and Calgary. On November 4th, 1958, construction began on the Don Mills Collegiate, located at 15 The Donway East. Ten months later -- on September 8th, 1959 -- it opened it doors to a student body of 500 students, and a teaching staff of 27 DMCI shares its building with Don Mills Middle School (formerly Don Mills Junior High). They have different street addresses and the interior is designed in a way that keeps the schools separated except for a common library. The auditorium in DMCI is also used by both schools. School Song Trivia * DMCI had the first brick-dust track in Canada (1960). * In March 1981, the school allowed the Canadian executive director of the Ku Klux Klan to speak to a Grade 12 history class. The principal later said it would never happen again. * A 25-year-old English teacher at DMCI was suspended in 1971 after police seized 16 marijuana plants from the garden at his home. He was convicted of possession. It was a huge news story in the Toronto area at the time, triggering discussions for months in the media about DMCI."Teacher suspended after marijuana conviction," Toronto Star, October 16, 1971"'I wonder what you're doing in a school' judge told teacher who had marijuana," Toronto Star, October 29, 1971"A graduate of Don Mills Collegiate defends the school," Toronto Star, January 20, 1972 * DMCI/Don Mills Middle School: Initially, the board planned to build two separate schools on the site with a shared heating plant, but in October 1957, trustee Dorothy Bishop prepared a report which raised the possibility of saving money by placing the two schools under one roof, as had previously been done in Vancouver and Calgary. * In October 1969 DMCI suspended 19 football players for drinking beer on a bus ride back from a game. The school pulled the team from the league for the remainder of the season. * Sue Johanson, from the Sunday Night Sex Show, opened the area's first high school-based birth control clinic at DMCI in November 1972. Called the Don Mills Birth Control Clinic, it used the school's health room every Monday night (expanded to two nights a week in 1980). The school principal said DMCI was "completely uninvolved" with the clinic, except for providing space."In Don Mills: Birth control clinic finds students wary," Marg Mironowicz, Toronto Star, November 14, 1972 References